I'm a theater lover. I am happiest when I am sitting in a theater. Or talking about theater. Or reading about theater. Or now blogging about it. If you’re reading this, you're probably a theater lover too and I hope you’ll keep me company as I blog my way through each Broadway season.

October 17, 2012

"Grace" is Blessed with Fine Performances

Polls say that atheism is rising in the U.S. and that even
believers go to church less often than they once did. But God still seems to be
talking to America’s playwrights.

Faith was in the background of John Patrick Shanley’s 2005 Pulitzer
Prize-winning play Doubt, but it was front and center in his Storefront Church,
which played at the Atlantic Theater Company in June. And A.R. Gurney is currently offering a contemporary
spin on the story of Jesus in his new play Heresy at the Flea
Theater through Nov. 4.

Now comes Craig Wright’s Grace, a homily on faith,
love and forgiveness that opened at Broadway's Cort Theatre last week.

Theatergoers don’t seem to know what to make of all this
sermonizing. They’re OK with it if it comes cushioned in layers of irony or
humor, as it does in The Book of Mormon. But they’re much less comfortable when
the religious talk is earnest. And it’s
very earnest in Grace.

The story centers around Sara and Steve, a young evangelical
couple who have moved from Minnesota to Florida to start a chain of
religious-themed hotels; and their new neighbor, a NASA scientist named Sam,
who has not only lost his faith but his fiancée and half of his face in a car
crash.

It’s not a spoiler to tell you that the interactions between
them will end badly because the play actually starts with its final scene and
then flashes back to show how things got to that tragic conclusion.

And that’s not the only metaphysical trick Grace employs.
The action, the Playbill tells us, takes place in two identically furnished rentals
that are next door to one another. In
this production,designer Beowulf Boritt has created one set that
doubles for the two apartments and the characters often—and sometimes confusingly—occupy the supposedly different
spaces at the same time.

Wright, a former seminarian, might have made better use of
his time if he’d devoted as much thought to his plotting. For too many of the changes that
happen to his characters seem unearned. The audience isn’t given a chance to
see relationships build; one minute Sara and Sam are wary friends and the
next they’re considerably more.

And, perhaps in a bid to add some humor or to pander to
secular theatergoers, Dexter Bullard has directed Paul Rudd to portray Steve as
a priggish jerk, which undercuts the dramatic arc for that character.

Luckily, Grace has been blessed with a particularly able set
of actors. Rudd has become famous for his roles in Judd Apatow’s comic
movies but he's got admirable stage chops as well. And both he and Kate Arrington, a member of Chicago’s
top-notch Steppenwolf Theatre Company, work hard to fill in the gaps and, ultimately, make Steve
and Sara believable.

But the evening belongs to the indie-theater favorite Michael
Shannon. In his Broadway debut, he is simply brilliant as Sam.

Shannon, known for such flamboyant turns as
the frustrated producer in Mistakes Happen, gives a restrained and yet still compelling performance. You can see just from the way he folds his arms the changes that
occur in Sam as he dares to believe in his love for Sara and in the possibility
of God. (Click here to read a profile of the actor.)

And even though Ed Asner, forever famous as TV’s Lou Grant
and making his first appearance on the stage in over two decades, seems
slightly befuddled at times, he is enough of a pro to use that discomfort to inform
his character of a Holocaust survivor who now works as an exterminator. And, particularly in the second of his two brief scenes, Asner brings a kind of Old Testament-wisdom to the play.

The presence of three recognizable movie and TV actors
(Shannon has developed a following for his role as the federal agent on HBO’s
“Boardwalk Empire”) is drawing non-traditional ticket buyers to Grace. And they greeted their idols with enthusiastic entrance applause at the performance my husband K and I saw.

But I don’t think
that Grace will convert many of them into regular theatergoers. Certainly not the frat
boy sitting next to me, who threw back his head and laughed uproariously at each
small joke (the slogan for Steve’s hotel chain is “Where would Jesus sleep?”) but
spent most of the show’s 100 minutes squirming in his seat.

Grace is unlikely to convert any religious atheists or
agnostics either. Its theological message
is too fuzzy for that. But, if you
worship good acting, then you probably won’t want to miss Shannon’s
performance because it will make a believer out of you.